James Petras: Covering Up US War Crimes In Iraq

Covering Up US War Crimes In Iraq

I am
reading William Shirer's Berlin Diary, a
journalist's account of Nazi political propaganda during the
1930s, as I watch the US “news” reports of the violent
assault on Fallujah.

The US mass media “reports”,
the style, content and especially the language, echo their
Nazi predecessors of 70 years ago to an uncanny degree.
Coincidence? Of course! In both instances we have
imperialist armies conquering countries, levelling cities
and slaughtering civilians — and the mass media, private in
form, state appendages in practice, disseminate the most
outrageous lies, in defense and praise of the conquering
“storm troopers” — call them SS or marines.

Both in Nazi
Germany and contemporary US, we are told by the mass media
that the invading armies are “freeing the country” of
“foreign fighters” and “armed terrorists”, who are
preventing “the people” from going about their everyday
lives. Yet we know that of the 1000 prisoners there are only
four foreigners (three Iranians and one Arab); Iraqi
hospitals report less than 10% of casualties are foreign
fighters. In other words, over 90% of the fighters are
Iraqis — most of whom were born, educated and raised
families in the cities in which they are fighting.

Like
the Nazi media, the major US radio and TV networks only
report what they call “military casualties” — failing to
report the civilians killed since the war started and the
thousands of women and children killed and wounded since the
assault on Fallujah began.

Like in Nazi Germany, the US
mass media feature unconfirmed reports by the US military of
the bloody murders, beheadings and kidnappings “by the
foreign terrorists”. The unconditional support of Nazi/US
mass media for the killing fields is best captured in their
reports of the massive bombing of densely populated city
districts. For the US network NBC, the dropping of 500-pound
bombs in the city of Fallujah is described as targeting an
“insurgent tunnel network in the city”. And the houses,
markets, stores — the mothers and children above those
tunnels — vaporised into “pink mist”, their existence never
acknowledged by the leading reporters and broadcasters.

Almost the entire population of non-Kurdish Iraq is
opposed to the US military and its puppet regime — yet the
media refer to the patriots defending their country from the
imperial invaders as “insurgents”, minimising the
significance of a nationwide patriotic liberation movement.
One of the most surreal euphemisms is the constant reference
to the “coalition forces” — meaning the US colonial
conquerors and the mercenaries and satraps that they direct
and control.

The terror bombing of homes, hospitals and
religious buildings by hundreds of airplanes and helicopter
gunships is described by the media as “securing the city for
free elections”.

“Freeing the city of insurgents”
includes the systematic murder of friends, neighbours and
relatives of every Iraqi living in the city of Fallujah.
“Surrounding the insurgents” means cutting off water,
electricity and medical aid for 200,000 civilians in the
city and putting tens of thousands who fled under threat of
a typhoid epidemic. “Pacifying the city” involves turning it
to absolute desolate poisoned rubble.

Why do Washington
and the mass media resort to gross, systematic lying and
euphemisms? Basically to reinforce mass support at home for
mass murder in Iraq. The mass media fabricates a web of lies
to secure a gloss of legitimacy for totalitarian methods in
order that the US armed forces can continue to destroy
cities with impunity.

The technique perfected by Goebbels
in Germany and practiced in the US is to repeat lies and
euphemisms until they become accepted “truths”, and embedded
in everyday language. The mass media by effectively
routinising a common language implicates the listeners. The
tactical concerns of the generals, the commanders directing
the slaughter (pacification), and the soldiers murdering
civilians are explained (and consumed by the millions
listening and watching) by the unchallenged authorities to
the compliant journalists and famous news anchors.

The
unity of purpose between the agents of mass murder and
everyday US public is established via “news reports”: The
soldiers “paint the names” of their wives and sweethearts on
the tanks and armoured vehicles that destroy Iraqi families
and turn Fallujah into ruins. Returning soldiers from Iraq
are “interviewed” who want to return to “be with their
platoon” and “wipe out the terrorists”.

Not all of US
combat forces experienced the joys of shooting civilians.
Medical studies report that one out of five returning
soldiers are suffering from severe psychological trauma, no
doubt from witnessing or participating in the mass killing
of civilians. The family of one returned soldier, who
recently committed suicide, reported that he constantly
referred to his killing of an unarmed child in the streets
of Iraq — calling himself a “murderer”.

Aside from these
notable exceptions, the mass propaganda media practise
several techniques, which assuage the “conscience” of US
soldiers and civilians. One technique is “role reversal” to
attribute the crimes of the invading force to the victims:
It is not the soldiers who cause destruction of cities and
murder, but the Iraqi families who 'protect the terrorists'
and “bring upon themselves the savage bombardment”.

The
second technique is to only report US casualties from
“terrorist bombs” — to omit any mention of thousands of
Iraqi civilians killed by US bombs and artillery. Both Nazi
and US propaganda glorify the “heroism”, “success” of their
elite forces (the SS and the Marines) — in killing
“terrorists” or “insurgents” — every dead civilian is
counted as a “suspected terrorist sympathiser”.

The US
and German military have declared every civilian building a
“storehouse” or “hiding place” for “terrorists'—hence the
absolutely total disregard of all the Geneva laws of
warfare. The US and Nazi practice of 'total war' in which
whole communities, neighbourhoods and entire cities are
collectively guilty of shielding 'wanted terrorists'—is of
course the standard operating military procedure of the
Israeli government.

The US publicises the cruel and
unusual punishment of Iraqi “suspects” (any male between 14
and 60 years old) taken prisoner: photos appear in Time and
Newsweek of barefoot, blindfolded and bound young men led
from their homes and pushed into trucks to be taken to
“exploitation centres” for interrogation. For many in the US
public these pictures are part of the success story — they
are told these are the “terrorists” who would blow up US
homes.

For the majority who voted for US President George
Bush, the mass propaganda media has taught them to believe
that the extermination of scores of thousands of Iraqi
citizens is in their best interests: they can sleep sound,
as long as “our boys” kill them “over there”.

Above all
the mass propaganda media has done everything possible to
deny Iraqi national consciousness. Every day in every way
the reference is to religious loyalties, ethnic identities,
past political labels, “tribal” and family clans. The
purpose is to divide and conquer, and to present the world
with a “chaotic” Iraq in which the only coherent, stable
force is the US colonial regime. The purpose of the savage
colonial assaults and the political labelling is to destroy
the idea of the Iraqi nation — and in its place to
substitute a series of mini-entities run by imperial satraps
obedient to Washington.

Sunday morning: November 14.
Today Fallujah is being raped and razed, captured. Wounded
prisoners are shot in the mosques. In New York, the
mega-malls are crowded with shoppers.

Sunday afternoon:
the Marines have blocked food, water and medicine from
entering Fallujah. Throughout the US millions of men sit in
front of the television watching football.

Shirer
reported that, while the Nazis invaded and ravaged Belgium
and bombed Rotterdam, in Berlin the cafes were full, the
symphony played and people walked their dogs in the park on
sunny Sunday afternoons.

Yes, there are differences
between Shirer's account of Nazi propaganda in defense of
the conquest of Europe and the US media's apology for the
invasion of Iraq and Israel's slaughter of the Palestinians:
One is committed in the name of the Fuehrer and the
Fatherland, the other in the name of God and Democracy. Go
tell that to the bloated corpses gnawed by dogs in the ruins
of Fallujah.

*************

[James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology
at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year
membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the
landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina and is
co-author of Globalization Unmasked. He can be reached at:
.]

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